Having described the process from the Galileo's first acquaintance with the Copernican theory to his establishment of that theory, the author passes on to the Galileo's most decisive demonstration of the theory, and indicates that his scientific demonstration was founded on a grave erroneous theory of tide.
Galileo, being a great physicist and astronomer, developed the modern science in various branches ; mathematics, dynamics, astronomy etc. But as the establishment of Copernican theory by Galileo, which has been considered to be his most important contribution to the modern science, was founded on a wrong assumption, the process against Galileo by the Roman Catholic Church, which has been regarded as a typical model of the conflict between science and religion, may not be called exactly as a conflict between science and religion. It would be more proper to say that it was a conflict between an old view of the world and a new one.
The author maintains that the relations between science and the view of the world might be considered as the relations between productive forces and the productive relations which are described in the Marx' Preface to the “Critique of the political economy.” Science should be with, and be developed in, a view of the world, and the view corresponds to a certain degree of development of the science of that time. And when the view of the world became a barrier of the development of science, but not the conditions for it, the view would be replaced by another. The process against Galileo was the replacement of Aristotelian-Ptolemaic view by the Copernican.According to this opinion of the author, it may be not difficult to understand, why the Galileo's scientifically erroneous demonstration of Copernican theory has really been the most important contribution to the modern science by him.
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